Neither Saint Nor Sinner Be

One of the big criticisms people had with Grand Theft Auto 4 was that the game was a tad too serious, there wasn’t enough scope for truly messing around… and in my eyes this is where Volition struck gold when it came to Saints Row… the whole game was made for messing around in, even during what passed for a plot.

While I’ve been more than aware of the franchise I’ve never dipped my toe into the game… but with the hype about GTA 5 pointing out how much bigger than San Andreas the game was (something that I felt was a “bad” thing) and the idea of planning and pulling off bank jobs not appealing all that much when I saw Saints Row 3 plus all the DLC available for just £12.85 (around $20 in toy money) the game found its way to me.

At that time I had no plans to buy GTA 5 which regular readers will know lasted for maybe a week after the game was released and thus we have a nightmare scenario for Saints Row… I’m playing it after I’ve spent weeks and weeks driving around Los Santos… how does it shape up?

November 5th: After the smash. Bang, wallop that was GTA 5 and it’s numerous distractions Saints Row 3 (hereafter referred to as SR3 because I’m too lazy to type it out every time) gets straight down to business and the start is scarily similar… a bank raid with complications.

Whereas Michael and Trevor shot their way to the getaway car and tried to run off SR3 takes a different approach with the gang deciding to helicopter the whole vault out of the bank… it ends in much the same way as GTA5’s raid… badly and you find yourself dumped in a new town with no cash, no weapons, no respect… so far so GTA.

Now I know time is of the essence here… it’s the 5th and there is something pretty big happening on the 22nd so I haven’t got the time to spend 95 hours on the game… so I’m using a guide, the intention being to blast through the game and all the collectibles and side quests as quickly as possible… if there’s time once the game is complete then I may work through the first part of “Burial At Sea” or whatever the proper DLC for Bioshock Infinite is called.

So I start straight away with a cumulative Achievement… hijacking a car Dukes of Hazard style by jumping in through the window… 50 down in the first couple of hours for some easy points, a few Achievements for completing some very easy early missions and I’m off and running… seems there are 80 Achievements in the game… makes my 7 thus far seem pretty paltry.

The game is fun, totally doesn’t take itself seriously and with the game being on the easy difficulty it’s not too taxing… but naturally there are niggles.

There are 32 Gangland Operations to stop or take over, these can be spotted on the map by seeing a group of enemy dots on your radar and if you kill enough of them then you’ll be classed as having taken over that particular operation… which is fine, but once this has been done the enemies continue to appear… there is no moment of victory to savour and you end up just running from the scene to try and get away to do something else.

Secondly the driving feels really rough after the delights of Los Santos… the breaks are too effective so power-sliding the car round corners is possible but really hard to perfect.

Having bought the complete edition and installed all the DLC before I started there is a wide range of wacko clothing and bizarre weapons and vehicles already open to me, a mind controlling octopus firing gun… check, a beach buggy style car with a huge cat head on the front… check, you get the picture.

The weapons don’t feel particularly powerful, even the shotguns take several close range blasts to kill one opposing gang member which is frustrating to the Nth degree, whether this changes with upgrades after time is still to be seen.

With all the DLC there for plunder I have a potential 1,300 Gamerscore ready for harvesting… so I’ll set my sights on a minimum of 1,100 from it… some stuff I’m just not sure about, killing 50 Brute enemies could take time as they seem impervious to gun fire and I’m not totally sure I can be bothered with hunting down all the collectibles or completing all instances of a certain mission type… especially when one of these is called “Escort” as I loathe Escort missions at the best of times.

According to my saved game I have 2hrs and 39mins of play behind me and I control 8% of the city… not much and certainly a long way to go… we’ll have to see how it goes.

November 6th: Another couple of hours of mayhem as I get to play in a tank… imagine a GTA rampage but rather than a set number of kills there is a set value damage wise you need to achieve… much more fun.

Having worked out how to collect the cash that all my properties bring in I set out to buy up all the properties in the game as quickly as possible, I’ve now picked up 26 of the 30 available and am only being stopped from the last 4 by the actual plot of the game… I’ve progressed that to a point where I can’t really free roam for the minute.

I also stumbled across the Genki game where you have to work your way through a warehouse to the exit, having killed a sufficient number of enemies and collected enough cash to open the exit… there are, it seems, just 3 of these for an Achievement and I’ve cleared the first 2 but, with free roam being off limits for now, can’t attempt the final one until I move the plot on.

It’s clear now that the developers have set the game up hoping that the off-plot activities keep the player amused and distracted from the main plot as I’ve already cleared 18-19% of the story and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface… Act 1 is complete, completed twice in fact to collect 2 Achievements for picking different outcomes, and the first opposition gang has been cleared away… time for the second faction.

After I manage to buy up all the properties the next task on my agenda is to buy all the stores and increase my income even more, then I can start working a little more on upgrades to my character and weapons.

Having put around 5 hours into the game I think I can safely say that were there to be a next-gen game out in a couple of years I’ll probably be there day one… if I felt like I was the sort of person who would happily switch back and forth between 2 generations of console then I’d potentially pick up SR4 when the full package becomes available but I’m not sure I can do that once I’ve experienced the delights of next gen gaming… going back to the 360 for Fable and South Park will be hard enough.

From what I have played this far the game seems to be a sort of merger between GTA and Crackdown with each part of the city being controlled by different gangs, Act 1 ends with the leader of the first gang being squashed by a huge metal ball and with them out of the way Act 2 starts with the appearance of a different gang… very Crackdown.

November 7th: With the main plot seemingly a little short I spend most of my evening messing around, change gender for a couple of hours (and not one other character bats an eyelid… nor when I change back again into a statuesque blonde with huge breasts) for an Achievement, and go back to buying up as many properties as I can… the 30 Properties are now all mine and bringing in a tidy hourly income, so I’ve moved onto the stores.

I also spend way too much time on Tank Mayhem missions (all complete) before discovering Insurance Fraud missions (again all complete) and then finding the final 3 Genki Reality Show missions (all complete) for a few more points.

With the progression of the story a bare minimum I now have Ho Missions (reclaiming Ho’s that used to work for one character) and a variant of Trafficking Missions where I have to drive a Ho with her client and keep out of the way of the press.

A variant of Mayhem missions appears where you’re entirely on foot has been discovered so what I’m pretty much doing now is all the side missions before returning to the main plot when I’ve cleared as much out of the way as possible.

Power-sliding has been worked out (you need to keep the handbrake button pressed) so I’m working towards the 5 minutes of Power-Sliding a meagre 1 second at a time, it makes driving a lot more fun being able to swing the cars round corners like a rag doll and the cars are generally more robust than their GTA counterparts… is it wrong to be having more fun with an old, clearly less polished, game than I did with GTA?

The activities are split around the four areas of the map, generally speaking there are 2 types of particular task in each part of the city, the Tank Mayhem missions only appear in 2 areas of the map, the Insurance Frauds only in two areas and so on… with so many markers on the map it’s nice to see that you can choose just to show the activities on the map so you can systematically work through them… the ones that have been completed are coloured Grey whilst new, untried, events are multi-coloured.

Having managed to reach Level 20 an Upgrade has allowed me to see Collectibles on the map as well so I’m sorely tempted to race around collecting those (each comes with a cash bonus… there are Drug Stashes, Photo Ops, Blow Up Dolls and something else I can’t quite remember) will earn me enough money to seriously upgrade my character and weapons before I move onto the main plot once more.

Off Topic: I get home and check my emails out as I generally do every couple of days, seems that Microsoft have given me another free gift (sort of) for being an Active Live member… or something… in that I will, on or around launch day, receive a code to unlock all the characters in “Killer Instinct” from the start without paying to unlock them via the character packs.

Now I hadn’t really planned to play the game at all, I’m not a big fighter fan (the last fighter I played was probably Tekken Tag, and only then for the bowling mini-game) and the prospect of playing with just 2 or 3 characters wasn’t something I’d really have thought of doing… but having all the characters unlocked, and the game being free, may mean it gets booted up at least once.

Add in my free digital copy of FIFA 14 (which may find its way to Ebay) and I’ll have the chance to play 4 full games at launch… spoilt for choice or what?

November 10th: After a couple of good long weekend sessions I’ve completed Act 2, all the activities, taken over all the gang operations and bought all the properties so I’ve now taken over 100% of the landscape… per the save game file I’m 89% complete in just under 20 hours of play.

The developers have done a much better job of adding variation in the missions than seen in GTA… mainly because it’s not overly bothered about realism… how else could someone dressed as a Japanese Princess wander into a major military facility and steal a fighter jet?

One whole section takes place in a sort of virtual reality setting which starts off with you depicted as a toilet, which is then “upgraded” to a blow up doll before becoming something more suitable… the whole section plays out really well, especially the huge boss battle at the end.

Playing on the casual difficulty (why make the game harder than it needs to be) means that the “one man army” routine is really easy to carry off, with all weapons and grenades levelled up to the max (and the flash-bang grenade levels up to “Fart In A Jar” which makes people sick) I’m what you’d refer to as “over levelled” were this an RPG.

One the final Act has been completed there are just the vehicle thefts and assassination missions to work through and the main game will be completed, I’m not going to grind out all 41 Challenges or concentrate on killing 50 Brutes (although the last one may be accomplished through normal game play) so the full 1,000 points is out of the question but I’ll be close.

As I worked through the activities I decided to make the final one a little easier than it ought to be so I took on the “Hard” trailblazer task before the medium version (Trailblazing is a point to point race whilst set on fire, bonus time can be gained by setting people and vehicles on fire along the way and this is the only way to finish each event) which turned out to be much easier than the one I’d left till last… not happy.

My last mission of the weekend, sinking an aircraft carrier (technically much bigger in scale than the final heist on GTA5 all in) was a good solid mission, and really made me realise that the actual “shooting” mechanics of the game are pretty damn good… there may not be an auto-lock function (and if there is I haven’t found it) but the gunplay works well enough to make each mission a decent enough challenge.

I’ve got the rest of the week to work through the rest of the game and the DLC before I start to prepare for the Xbox One launch at the end of next week.

I may even have time to fit in the first “proper” DLC for Bioshock Infinite before then.